jueves, 29 de noviembre de 2012

The Revealing Records conference series brings together postgraduate
students from across the UK and Europe to share challenges and approaches in
the study of medieval sources. Revealing ‘records’ from coins to castles,
letters to law codes and chronicles to crusade sermons, from the sixth century
to the fifteenth, the series is a highlight of the postgraduate calendar.
Hosted by the King’s History Department, previous benefactors have included the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC),
the Royal
Historical Society, the Henry III Fine Rolls Project and the King's Arts & Humanities Research Institute
(AHRI).

Keynote speakers :

Professor Julia Crick (King’s College London)

Professor Jonathan Phillips (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Now in its fifth year, the Revealing Records conference series brings
together postgraduate researchers working with a wide range of sources from
across the medieval world to share challenges and approaches through the
presentation of their research.

* Call for papers *

We encourage applications from postgraduate students working with a wide
variety of records – from the written work to objects, buildings and more.
Papers that employ an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon palaeography,
archaeology or other related disciplines are particularly welcome. Abstract
(200 words maximum) are welcome from students wishing to present a 20-minute
paper. Students should provide their name, institution, contact information,
paper title and synopsis.

The Journée d’études, Pratiques de catalogage des manuscrits islamiques (Actualités de
la recherche) / Cataloguing of Islamic Manuscripts (Work in Progress) is
a workshop (atelier de recherche) devoted to some current projects of
the Series Catalogorum, the presentation of the manuscript collections
under the process of cataloguing, and various case studies.

Farid ALAKBARLI, Islamic medical manuscripts in the Library of the Academy of Sciences of Baku.Thibaut D’HUBERT, Notes on the colophons of Bengali texts copied in the Arabic script and of some Persian manuscripts from Bengal (17th-19th c.).Sara FANI, Bindings and watermarks in Arabic, Persian and Syriac manuscripts in the National Library of Florence and in the Medicea Laurenziana Library.Mauro NOBILI, The De Gironcourt Collection in the Institut de France. Script styles in West African manuscripts.Delio Vania PROVERBIO, Turkish manuscripts in the Vatican Library: A brief survey of the (late) twentieth-century acquisitions.

Paolo SARTORI, The Archive of the Khans of Khiva: an Islamic culture of documentation?

François DEROCHE,Typologie paléographique et catalogage.

7 December 2012

COLLOQUIUM CODEX AND TEXT

The Colloquium is dedicated to Codex and Text. The use and relevance of codicology, paleography and illumination for textual studies. Its aim is to highlight the relation between text and manuscript support, and focus on interrelations between codicological studies and textual studies in the research on the history of Islamic manuscript tradition.

Program

Dagmar E. RIEDEL, The Downsides of Popularity: the Methodological challenges posed by the manuscript tradition of al-shifā’ by ‘Iyāḍ b. Mūsā.Roberto TOTTOLI, Textual criticism and bibliography in Muslim Arabic texts: the case of a variant in a passage in the manuscript and printed versions of the Daqā’iq al-akhbār by ‘Abd al-Raḥīm al-Qāḍī.Carmela BAFFIONI, The Ms. Ambrosiano arabo & 105 sup and its relationship with Berlin syr. 88.Annie VERNAY-NOURI,Gloses décoratives dans la Turquie ottomane du XVIe siècle.Osamu OTSUKA, The genealogical tree of Ḥamd-Allāh Mustawfī: how to write general history in a few folios?Kristina RICHARDSON, Reconstructing the autograph corpus of Ibn Tulun (d. 1546).Nuria MARTINEZ DE CASTILLA MUÑOZ, La codicologie au service de l’ecdotique: le cas des manuscrits morisques.Serpil BAĞCI, Where do we place the pictures? The consistency of Mahall-i Tasvir.Noha ABOU-KHATWA, Layout in the service of textual studies: a Mamlūk Qur’ān at the Royal Ontario Museum.Tulun DEĞERLENDIRICI, A History from the Edge: Flyleaf Notes on the Turkish Hamzanâma Manuscripts and their Contribution to the History of Reading.Ayse ALDEMIR-KILERCIK, Vassale: A unique restoration technique of the past that led to the loss of codicological data.Anna Maria DI TOLLA, An Arabic-Berber manuscript on customary law from Tafilalt, Morocco.Florian SCHWARZ, The author as publisher. A codicological view on the oeuvre of the Kurdish theologian Ibrahim al-Kurani (1616-1690).

sábado, 24 de noviembre de 2012

By definition and in broad terms, an autograph manuscript is a book, document, etc., handwritten by its author. The term autograph is now often used instead of holograph which normally designates a manuscript fully handwritten by an author. An authorial manuscript can be holograph or autograph: it may have been either written by the author himself or copied by a scribe whose work was then corrected by the author. Consequently, this category of manuscripts represents a stage (preliminary or final) in the redaction of the text intended by the author for the contents as well as the language used.

The material characteristics of both categories of manuscripts are specific to the time and theregion in which the author composed his text. Codicological and textual studies about autograph/holograph and authorial manuscripts are thus steadily-founded and favorable to insightful conclusions. Unfortunately, they have received little attention in the field of Islamicstudies though there is a wealth of material available.

The aim of the conference is to focus on four main aspects of the research about autograph/holograph and authorial manuscripts:

– codicology: can these books be analyzed as any other manuscript is? Do their pecularities,if any, bring forward particular pieces of information?– paleography: how can one identify a handwriting with a certain degree of scientific confidence,beyond intuition? What are the discriminating criteria? Is there a method to be used/developed?– textual criticism: how important is this category of manuscripts in an editorial process?Which strategy to choose when more than just one authorial manuscript of the same text is available? Should one study them separately or by comparison? What importance is to be given to the status of a manuscript (fair copy, draft, copybook, notebook, etc.)? How to classify all these versions? How can the study of authorial manuscripts improve our knowledge of Arabic in linguistic terms?– working method: what benefit can be drawn from different autograph versions of a same text? Which information can be deduced from them? Is there a specific methodology or composing process? What about originality, plagiarism, or even authority?

Please note that papers presenting the discovery of an autograph manuscript will be taken into account only if they approach at least one the theoretical aspect listed above. Those who wish to participate are kindly requested to send a provisional title together with an abstract of no more than 300 words to the organizing committee. The deadline for submission is 31 January 2013. A circular containing more details on the organization of the conference will be sent to those whose papers will have been accepted.The duration of each conference paper is 30 minutes inclusive 10 minutes of discussion andquestions. English and French will be the languages of the conference.Speakers must pay for their own transportation and hotel accommodation. Liège can easily be reached by train (one hour) from the major international airport of Brussels. A conference hotel rate will be available and most hotels are within walking distance of the campus. Thosewishing to attend but not to speak should register in advance to guarantee space is available.

viernes, 23 de noviembre de 2012

The Digital Resource for Palaeography (DigiPal) is a project funded
by the European Research Council that brings digital technology to bear
on scholarly discussion of medieval handwriting. At its heart will be
hundreds of newly-commissioned photographs of eleventh-century
Anglo-Saxon script from the major manuscript collections in the world,
with detailed descriptions of the handwriting, the textual content, and
the wider manuscript or documentary context.

DigiPal will be more than just an online annotated catalogue of
manuscript images, however. Taking advantage of recent advancements in
digital research, as well as developing new technologies, DigiPal will
offer innovative ways of interrogating and interacting with the
material.

It is our intention that DigiPal will showcase the benefits of
digitally-assisted palaeography, opening up new possibilities for the
study of scripts, scribes, and manuscripts.

TRAME is a research infrastructure project for the development and
interoperability of web databases about medieval manuscript tradition.

The focus of TRAME is to foster the interactivity of repositories
concerning digitized images of medieval manuscripts, their codicological
descriptions, their textual and philological interest, their cultural
significance in the context of the european history.

TRAME has three major issues:

step 1: to build a metasearch engine capable to search across the
databases of the italian partners that joined the starting phase of the
project;

step 2: to evaluate the possibility of extension of the metasearch
approach to other web resources (libraries, portals, individual research
projects), using various tools and technologies;

step 3: extend the metasearch approach to virtually any relevant web
resource devoted to medieval texts and manuscripts, through an extended
partnership program

The Book of Kells is widely recognised as one of the world’s most
beautiful decorated manuscripts and a masterpiece of European medieval
art, with images that are staggering in their richness, intricacy and
inventiveness. This handsome new volume, by Dr Bernard Meehan, Keeper of
Manuscripts at Trinity College Library, brims with fresh insights and
interpretations and features the extraordinary imagery on a generous
scale. The publication which was introduced by Professor of History of
Art, Roger Stalley also marks the tercentenary of the foundation of the
Old Library building, Trinity College Library, Dublin, one of the great historic libraries of the world.

The Book of Kells dates from around 800 AD and contains a Latin text
of the four Gospels. There is great uncertainty about its origins. It is
thought that the Book of Kells was first worked on at the monastery on
the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, and was continued,
after Viking raids, at the monastery of Kells in Ireland. The Book
remained in Kells until the mid-1600s, and in 1661 was presented to
Trinity College, Dublin, where it is on permanent display, and is
regarded as a national treasure. It is seen every year by half a million
visitors from all over the world.

This
new publication, presented in a cloth-bound slipcase, features 84
full-size reproductions of complete pages of the manuscript, while
enlarged details allow one to relish the intricacy of elements barely
visible to the naked eye. Meehan explores the Book of Kells through its
historical background; the spectacular openings of the texts that
precede the Gospels; a study of earlier and comparable manuscripts;
detailed examination of symbols, themes and narratives, a look at the
scribes and artists who worked on the manuscript; and a consideration of
technical aspects, illuminated by recent scientific research.

Bernard Meehan is Head of Research Collections and Keeper of
Manuscripts at Trinity College Library, Dublin. His curatorial
responsibilities include the college’s distinguished corpus of medieval
manuscripts (including the Book of Kells and Book of Durrow),
pre-medieval manuscripts, collections of Irish historical and literary
papers, and the early printed books housed in the iconic Long Room of
the Old Library.